


Private Time, Interrupted

by epersonae



Series: The Magcretia Chronicles [4]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Spoilers, idk how to tag this but it's pretty messed up emotionally, painful ending you have been warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 06:54:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11374905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: What happens when expressing your love is the one thing that might destroy it? Find out in...the adventure zone!





	Private Time, Interrupted

Inside the Chug ‘N Squeeze after closing, it was dark and quiet and empty, except for a single station with the soft glow of a light spell floating above it. A pile of blue robes lay over an empty chair, and a white oak staff leaned against the far wall. Under the light, the Director sat shaping a vase. It was a simple shape, almost a pure cylinder, with the clean lines she favored. She paused, keeping the wheel spinning while she dipped her hands in water again, then returned to smoothing the sides.

Throwing pottery took so much concentration, especially to make it as smooth and neat as she needed it to be. There was no room for anything else: worrying about the past, planning the future, no room for fear or regret. Just the wet clay under her hands.

The dim quiet was shattered by the sound of someone stumbling over a chair. She abruptly stopped the wheel and her hand plunged into the clay; a huge lump spun off onto the floor, and the rest of it collapsed into a heap.

“Shit.”

And at the exact same moment, a familiar voice: “Ow!”

“Magnus?”

A long silence.

“Madame Director, what are you doing here?”

“One of the privileges of being Director is getting a little quiet time in the Chug ‘N Squeeze.” To her eternal frustration, there was no way to make that name sound dignified. “And you?”

Another long pause, as he picked his way through the rows of empty stations.

“I was up.” There’s something guarded, almost hard, in his voice. “I saw a light. Thought it might be…I don’t know.” He shook his head impatiently. “We’re safe up here, from, you know…?”

She closed her eyes. How to even answer that question?

“I take the base’s security very seriously, Magnus. As for this, it’s just my little hobby. Nothing to worry about.”

When she opened her eyes, he was standing by the board where her work from earlier in the evening stood in neat rows.

“These are beautiful,” he said. “You made all of them?”

She nodded, and the look of appreciation for craftsmanship was so genuine that she wanted to grab it and hold it to her chest. She wanted to — and suddenly she felt naked in her sleeveless dress without the protection of the Director’s full garb. She turned away from him and picked up her wine, smudging the glass with muddy fingerprints. A long sip to try to gather her thoughts, and maybe a dignified silence would give him space to go. Maybe she could start over on that vase once he was gone.

But he didn’t leave. He was just looking at the pottery, and looking at her, and not saying anything.

“Magnus, are you all right?”

And the look in his eyes, it gave her that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one she’s spent a decade running away from.

“How do you move on…from…?”

“I don’t know.” For a second, she thought of Maureen, who had helped her in so many ways, even if it had all gone so wrong. “One just moves. Time…” She was about to say something trite, something about the passage of time, when she realized she knew that haunted look already: the Relic Wars, and his constant fear that the Chalice was being used. She knew those dark circles under his eyes. He wasn’t sleeping. Again. “Oh. The Chalice?”

He nodded.

“I would have done it for her.” Of course he would have. “But…she would have been disappointed in me. Her heart was so big.” Of course it was, of course he found a woman who could match his strength and his boundless heart. For a second she was afraid she would shatter the wineglass in her hand, she was trying so hard to hold it together.

Then his expression shifted, and she couldn’t read it. A hundred years living together, and now she had no idea what was going on behind his eyes.

“You’re older than me,” he said finally. “Surely there’s been…someone?”

Her breath caught in her throat — no, she couldn’t breathe at all. No, this wasn’t fair. What do you say? The panicky feeling of having done absolutely everything wrong surged through her. She gulped down the last of the wine and set down the glass, hoping he couldn’t see how badly she was shaking.

“Director — can I call you Lucretia?” His voice cracked very slightly. She nodded, not yet trusting her own voice. “I don’t know what got you here, and I guess it’s none of my business. But you’re a beautiful woman and you deserve to be happy.”

“Magnus.” She couldn’t keep the anguish out of her voice, nor could she look at him.

“No, I’m serious.” He touched her jaw, which she was unconsciously clenching. “It was the most painful thing I’ve ever done, saying no…. But I know now. I have to move on. I should’ve already, maybe?” He stroked her cheek and she leaned into his hand. “And you should too. Whatever it is, you can’t hold on so tight.”

She sucked in her breath. His touch was exquisite, gentle, and….

“Magnus, what are you saying?”

She looked in his eyes again. That strange unreadable expression, it was gone. Want — that’s what she saw, and she knew that look so well, and gods this was a bad idea — but before she could put on her Director voice, before she could be appropriate, he had kissed her. He was kissing her, and it was familiar, so familiar, but not too familiar? And yet, not too unfamiliar? She stopped trying to make comparisons and instead let herself be kissed, and then kissed back.

She put her arms around him; her hands rested in the small of his back. He held her face with both hands as he kissed her, then ran his fingers down her back, put his hands around her waist. He pulled away from the kiss and lifted her, without a word, onto one of the empty countertops. He was staring — she was probably staring too. She touched his face: she couldn’t stop touching his face, the shape she knew with her eyes closed, but with a decade’s worth of life, scars of course, but also just time, the passage of actual time. Her fingers streaked clay on his face, but somehow it didn’t matter.

“It’s okay?”

“Yes, Magnus. Yes.”

She smiled, and he touched her lips, and she opened her mouth and sucked on his fingers, and he groaned. Don’t think about how long it’s been, don’t think about what happens tomorrow. Don’t think.

He started unbuttoning her dress, pushing it off of her shoulders, exposing her. She’d thought she was past the vanity, had gotten used to this prematurely aged body; she kept fit as much as she could, considering. But there’s a pang of self-consciousness, missing the body she had then, although of course he doesn’t know about any of that. Maybe that’s for the best. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the tops of her breasts, one and then the other, in the same order as he used to do — he sucked on a nipple while teasing the other, and she arced towards him.

“I didn’t know you were so sexy under all those robes,” he said as he stood again.

For a second, she recovered her facade.

“I do have a reputation to uphold.”

Magnus laughed.

“Merle would shit a brick —”

“Could we not —”

“Yeah, of course. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“A little low on blood to the brain?” she said, looking down pointedly.

He laughed again, for that moment, it was the best sound in the world.

“Yeah, I guess.” He adjusted himself in his pants; she reached forward but he gently pushed her away. “I want to? Keep doing this? For right now.” And with that he leaned forward to lick the other nipple, and she whined softly. He put his fingers in her mouth again, and she licked them ferociously. He hummed onto her nipple, kissed below her breasts, kissed her belly, kept undoing the buttons of her dress until she was sitting bare-ass naked on the counter. He took his fingers out of her mouth, and she moaned at the sudden emptiness.

“Well, that’s something,” he murmured. His eyes were wide, and they were both breathing fast and shallow. He slid a finger inside her, then a second one, and she bit her lower lip; he rested his warm calloused thumb on her clit, and her eyelids fluttered closed. She threw her head back and just let him touch her, gripping the countertop with her wet dirty hands, rocking her hips up to meet the movement of his hand. The rhythm was perfect; shockingly, achingly perfect.

“Magnus.”

“Yes, Lucretia.”

“Oh, Magnus.”

She kept calling out his name, louder and louder, and he kept on with the same steady rhythm, and she started to come in long sweet pulses, losing all sense of time and place, finally crying out: “Magnus, I love you Magnus.”

And he stopped. He stopped moving at all. Through the haze of her orgasm, she opened her eyes, and that expression, the one she can’t quite figure out, it had come back, but more so: hard and flat and anxious? No, suspicious.

No. No no no. This isn’t, she didn’t. She was always so careful. His hand is inside of her and she just said something, she hardly even knew what, but it triggered the static. Her love triggered the static, and that look.

He pulled his hand away, and her mouth opened and closed but she couldn’t form any words at all.

“Magnus?”

He kept not saying anything. He wiped his hand on his pants. He blinked slowly, looking at her with suspicion and disbelief and distrust, and he backed away without a word. He left her alone, in the dark empty Chug ‘N Squeeze, with the ruined vase still on the wheel.

She stared at the blob of clay, her eyes unfocused, unblinking. Then she put her head in her hands and whispered to herself, “Lucretia, what have you done?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Wooden Duck Appreciation Society for reading snippets and yelling. My heart might never recover from episode 66, but at least we have each other to share (and magnify?!) the pain.


End file.
